


frozen

by basementhero



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Unrepentant Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 06:45:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7704487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basementhero/pseuds/basementhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Harry makes ice cream and bends the truth, but it's all to impress a certain blond Irishman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	frozen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fairynarrytale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairynarrytale/gifts).



> for Naia, who had to listen to me go on about making ice cream until she demanded that i write her a drabble about it. (cross-posted to tumblr)

Harry likes to impress people.

He knows this isn’t a unique personality quirk—knows most people, in some way, like to dazzle others—but the instinct to amaze definitely gets out of hand for him.

(There was the one time when he was eight and tried to make his mum’s Mothers’ Day breakfast all on his own and had to get seventeen stitches in his hand after a knife accident whilst chopping potatoes.)

(And there was the other time when he dropped two hundred pounds on a new outfit for his first date with Alicia from his year ten Maths class…only he didn’t actually have two hundred pounds and his mum nearly killed him when she got her credit card bill for the month.)

(Obviously it goes without saying that jumping off a bridge to make a good impression on your roommate’s friend group is a terrible idea, but at least he’d been attached to a bungie cord at the time.)

When it comes to Niall, though, there is nothing Harry can do to make himself look like an attractive option for a life partner, apparently. It’s his own fault for being so tongue-tied with infatuation; he really can’t blame Niall for not wanting to date a bloke who appears to be mute in a rude, standoffish sort of way half the time and only able to spew childish jokes or fake philosophical bullshit for the other half. Harry is a complete mess.

So of course he takes the only opportunity that has ever presented itself to look good in front of Niall.

“This ice cream is fecking delicious, mate,” Harry hears the melodious sound of Niall’s Irish brogue from across the room. “Where’d you get it?”

Louis, ever an angel—well, sometimes honest in a way that is beneficial to Harry rather than a teasing blow to his self-esteem—replies, “Harry made it.”

Harry, who has been on-and-off covertly staring at Niall all evening, sees Niall’s expression go from blissful over the taste of mint chocolate chip ice cream to awed by Harry’s apparent skill with frozen dairy. The blond glances over and meets Harry’s gaze before Harry can tear his eyes away to casually look somewhere else in the room as if he hasn’t been eavesdropping.

Niall holds up his bowl and says “Cheers, mate,” and it’s the proudest Harry has possibly ever been.

So the next time Harry and Niall’s mutual friends have a party, Harry makes sure to pack a small tub of vanilla bean ice cream into a cooler stuffed with as many ice packs as he could fit to keep the treat from melting on the ride over to Liam’s. He maybe speeds a bit to shorten his commute, but he doesn’t get caught and the ice cream is still frozen when he arrives, so it’s worth it—the look on Niall’s face when the ice cream is bestowed upon him makes it even more so.

“Thanks!” He grins and it’s like Harry’s whole life has just brightened, like he’s been assigned his own personal sun to make everything light and shiny and warm.

“How did you make this?” Niall questions curiously when he’s down to his last spoonful. Harry has been leaning on the wall beside him, happily watching the man enjoy his dessert and offering nothing in the way of conversation. “Must’ve taken hours.”

It didn’t, actually. It took twenty-five minutes of letting his ice cream maker—a housewarming gift from his sister—churn away while he watched reruns of Pointless in the other room. He spent maybe ten minutes mixing together a grand total of four ingredients (five, if he includes the imprecise “pinch” of salt he threw in at the end after deliberating over what a pinch really means when you consider finger sizes and salt types); the only hours involved were the two in which he let the liquid cool in his fridge while he stressed over his party outfit. But Niall thinks he slaved away over this ice cream. Niall thinks Harry put a lot of time and effort into making something tasty for him. Harry likes the thought of Niall thinking that Harry would do that sort of thing.

(And he would, honestly; it’s just that he already has the machine and he wouldn’t want to hurt Gemma’s feelings by not using her gift.)

So Harry goes along with it. “Just a few,” he lies. “Not too bad.”

Niall smiles thankfully at him and goes in for a hug. Harry can’t help but blush, especially when Niall buries his head just the slightest bit into Harry’s neck.

It keeps happening after that. Any time there’s an excuse for him and Niall to be in the same place, Harry makes ice cream or sorbet or frozen yogurt (and he tried to make frozen custard once but it went miserably and he’d been an hour late making a panicked batch of simple chocolate ice cream to replace it). Niall never tells him to stop so he doesn’t—not when he finally gets to the phone number exchanging milestone, not when he gets a personal invitation to Niall’s flat, not when he finally grows a pair and asks Niall out for a real date. They go to a decent Italian restaurant and Harry brings a mediocre caramel gelato with him even though he knows that the restaurant’s dessert options will be far better.

(Niall doesn’t order a real dessert and eats Harry’s offering anyway, jokingly exaggerated food-orgasm moans included. Harry doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or tackle Niall to the floor and ravish him.)

Harry doesn’t ever correct Niall about his assumptions on Harry’s process, though. He googles how to make ice cream without a machine and chirps that information the next time Niall brings it up, pretends that he froze and stirred and froze and stirred until he got the creamy, smooth texture that he actually achieved by pouring cream into a cylinder and flipping a switch to the ‘on’ position. Niall never stops being impressed so Harry never stops being a liar.

(He only feels bad about it sometimes. It’s really not hurting anyone, so he tells himself that it’s totally fine and definitely not going to come back to bite him in the arse.)

It _is_ a lie though. A little one, sure, but still not the truth. And the truth does have a way of coming to light.

“You’re always making me ice cream,” Niall says around a spoonful of strawberry, his back against Harry’s chest as they’re both propped up against the headboard of Harry’s oversized bed.

They’d gone for the euphemistic “dessert” before the real one, but Niall apparently wasn’t bothered by the sweat drying on their bodies enough to keep him from eating his treat in bed. He’d made Harry go get it for him ( _“I’m sore, Haz, and it’s your fault.”_ ), which the brunet did without too much complaining because he was rather satisfied with life in general and probably would’ve done almost anything to please Niall after such an intense and frankly mind-blowing round of sex.

Harry is dragged away from his thoughts, from his blank stare at Niall’s tongue flicking out to catch melting ice cream nearly sliding off his spoon kind of like he’d done to Harry’s—

“—should show me how to make it sometime.”

“Wha’?”

Niall laughs, by this point used to Harry zoning out, lost in thoughts too big for his head. He thinks it’s cute that his boyfriend is such a thinker, even if it sometimes leads to him walking into walls or missing entire conversations.

“I said, you should teach me how to make it. Ice cream.”

Harry smiles like it’s the best idea he’s heard in a long time.

(It’s really a terrible idea. The absolute worst.)

So Niall says he’ll come over the next week. He decides he wants cookies and cream, so he and Harry go down to Tesco. Harry already has cream and milk and sugar and vanilla, so it’s just the Oreos they need. Not nearly enough ingredients to be daunting or expensive and make Niall change his mind. Harry carries his environmentally-friendly, reusable shopping bag like it’s full of bricks instead of two sleeves of cookies. Niall doesn’t seem to notice that Harry’s dragging the weight of his lies on his shoulders; the blond is just excited to learn and consume sugar.

They mix the ingredients easily: Niall carefully measures out the milk while Harry just dumps an approximate amount of cream because he’s done this so many times he can guesstimate what he’s doing. Harry adds in the vanilla extract and sugar and lets Niall whisk until the sugar is dissolved. They crumble one of the sleeves of Oreos and then do the other one too just for the sake of it, licking the crumbs off each other’s fingers shamelessly. Harry almost forgets that he’s about to shatter Niall’s opinion of him.

(Almost. Unfortunately, not even Niall sucking Harry’s thumb between his deliciously pink lips is enough to actually distract Harry from his doom.)

Niall orders them pizza for the two-hour wait for the mix to preliminarily chill. Harry tosses a large bowl into his freezer as well to prepare for the method he’s been pretending to use for months.

(The pizza tastes like dread. The extra pineapple Niall remembers to order for him makes it worse.)

“Should we add these now?” Niall inquires, pointing at the Oreo pieces, once they’ve transferred the liquid into the frozen bowl.

Harry shrugs because he honestly doesn’t know. “Just like…a few of them.”

So they add a handful and then put the bowl back into the freezer and spend forty-five minutes watching golf on the telly.

(Niall watches golf; Harry frets, glancing over his shoulder towards the kitchen every few minutes.)

They stir the mixture, add in a bit more Oreo, let it freeze again.

And again.

And again.

And it’s not working very well at all. Harry might start crying. Niall’s just confused.

“Are you alright, pet?”

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Harry whimpers pitifully.

Niall tilts his head and raises an eyebrow, now both confused and concerned. “What for?”

“I lied. About the ice cream. All of it.” Harry wrings his hands mournfully, nervously.

“You…didn’t make it?”

“No, I _did_ , but I…”

Harry pauses, draws in a deep breath like he’s about to confess to cheating or killing his grandmother or anything else more serious than what actually comes out of his mouth.

“I have an ice cream machine.”

Harry shuts his eyes tightly and waits for Niall to yell at him or get that disappointed tone that he’s used to from years of fucking up.

Instead, he feels Niall’s hands rest gently on his cheeks. He opens one eye cautiously. Niall shakes his head, smiling fondly, which is not at all what Harry was expecting.

“You think I’m mad you have a machine?”

“You thought I was spending hours like, making food for you…you were so impressed…” Harry pouts.

“Harry.”

“Yes?”

“You’re ridiculous.”

Harry sighs. “I know.”

“Where’s the machine?”

“In my closet.”

“I’ll go get it. You put on the kettle.”

Harry nods. He likes the very slight swish of Niall’s hips as he walks away and the way he’s chuckling to himself about Harry as he goes.

The entire bowl of failure goes in with the rubbish before Harry hears Niall’s little “a-ha!” of triumph from across the flat.

“Might have to buy one of those meself,” Niall remarks happily some time later, sprawled across Harry’s sofa and eating straight out of the ice cream maker’s bowl.

Harry hums as he chews a particularly large bit of Oreo, his own (much smaller) portion of the ice cream in a separate—floral-printed, square-shaped—bowl.

“Or you could move in with me and share mine.”

(He drops his ice cream all over his floor and is halfway through his second apology before Niall finally stops laughing long enough to accept his accidental proposal.)


End file.
